Myanmar forces swoop on protests in two main cities

Security forces clamped down on protests in Myanmar's two biggest cities yesterday, firing warning shots and using baton charges in the third day of a crackdown that has left at least 13 people dead.
The military regime also appeared to have cut the main Internet link to block images and reports of the violence from the isolated nation, which have galvanised world opinion against the ruling generals.
About 10,000 people surged onto the streets of the main city of Yangon, playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse as they repeatedly confronted police and soldiers before scattering and regrouping once more.
In the central city of Mandalay, thousands of young people on motorbikes rode down a major thoroughfare towards a blockade set up by security forces who unleashed a volley that witnesses believed could have been rubber bullets.
Intent on quelling the biggest anti-government demonstrations in 20 years, the ruling junta has also mounted an offensive against the Buddhist monks who have led nearly two weeks of mass rallies.
With dozens of monks arrested, beaten or confined to their monasteries, the mantle has now been taken up by student groups and youths who dominated Friday's rallies.
"The monks have done their job and now we must carry on with the movement," said one student leader in downtown Yangon.
"This is a non-violent mass movement," he shouted as demonstrators tried to move towards the Sule Pagoda, one of the focal points of the street demonstrations.
At a separate protest in Yangon, around 500 people marched in the streets, singing the national anthem as thousands applauded them from the sidewalks.
Monks, revered figures in this devout Buddhist nation, helped transform what began as a scattershot series of protests over a hike in fuel prices into the stiffest challenge to the junta's military rule since 1988.
But since the crackdown was launched Wednesday, at least three monks have been killed, others badly beaten, and hundreds arrested, including eight more on Friday in Yangon and Mandalay.
At least two monasteries were raided Wednesday night, including one in Yangon's northeastern satellite town of South Okkalapa, where about 100 Buddhist monks were arrested and eight people shot dead after protesting the action.
Myanmar's main Internet link was down Friday because of what a telecom official said was a damaged undersea cable. Blogs, pictures and amateur video of the violence posted on the Web have helped ignite criticism of the regime.
Security forces have also smashed cameras and cellphones, and beaten people who were carrying them. Several newspapers in the country, which was formerly known as Burma, are no longer operating.
Official figures of victims have been impossible to confirm. State media said nine people were killed in Thursday's violence. Four were killed on the first day of the crackdown.
But the Australian ambassador to Myanmar, Bob Davis, told Australian radio that the actual death toll may have been several times higher.
He said witnesses had reported to embassy officials that they had seen "significantly more than that number of dead being removed from the scene of the demonstrations."
A Japanese journalist was among those killed Thursday, and Japan's Fuji Television showed footage which appeared to show him being shoved down by Myanmar troops and then shot at close range.
Japan, which has cordial relations with Myanmar, has said it will protest the death and investigate if he was killed intentionally. But it said it will not cut off aid to the military-run nation.
US President George W. Bush called on China, Myanmar's main ally and chief trading partner, to press the generals to end the crackdown.
The 47-member UN Human Rights Council decided to hold a special session on October 2 to examine the unrest in Myanmar, UN spokesman Rolando Gomez said.
And the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) issued an unusually critical statement on its fellow member Myanmar, expressing "revulsion" over the use of force against demonstrators.
UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari was in Singapore on Friday, headed to Myanmar in a bid to convince the junta to open dialogue with democracy activists.